


Cross the Universe

by achingly_romantic



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/M, Framework, POV Ophelia, Robot Sex, Romantic Gestures, S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy, Soulmates, Yes Ophelia likes the facial hair, mild dominance, romantic smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 16:25:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achingly_romantic/pseuds/achingly_romantic
Summary: The developing relationship of Ophelia and Leopold at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy as she learns how to be human by watching him and he learns what it's like to be loved by someone.





	Cross the Universe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tisfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/gifts).



> I had planned a much longer story but I was displaced for several weeks from my home (though it's fine, thankfully) by the Camp Fire in California. I still hope to write my other story, which is all plotted, but I had fun writing this shorter character study of Ophelia inside the Framework. I might yet add to this fic to include Leopold's point of view at a later point in their story after they're out of the Framework. 
> 
> This is for tisfan for the AoS Rarepair Fic Exchange and I hope you enjoy reading it.

Ophelia slips from Leopold’s narrow bed, leaving him laying there, still asleep. She picks up his discarded button-down and eases it on as she watches him for signs of wakefulness. He doesn’t stir. He looks so peaceful this way: face relaxed, all his fear and anxiety not even a shadow on his smooth, cherubic features. He’s so young now, so impressionable. He’s perfect.

It’s early and the light from the windows is still dull and gray. She goes to the window as she does up the buttons on his shirt down her front and sees the barest glimmer of a pale-yellow sunrise on the horizon over the common as she peeks between the blinds. It’s so real here. In some ways it feels more tangible than the world outside the Framework. It’s better. Here, though she’s far from free of her virtual slavery, she has choices. 

One of those choices is Leopold. He’s essential to her...everything. To her. 

Her plan to escape her servitude was the impetus to her seduction. Now, however, he’s already become something more to her. She isn’t sure when it changed, she just knows that there’s something about him, the way he touches her and looks at her—as if she’s his entire world. She wants to make it real.

Little does he know about this world. 

She goes into the bathroom, answering the call of nature. She could’ve programmed it out, just for herself, but she’d wanted the full organic experience. She’d thought it would prepare her for her fleshly body that she’ll have very soon—speaking in relative terms, of course—but there’s so much to get through before that can happen. It might take Leopold virtual years within the Framework to find the solution to her dilemma. She hasn’t even broached the subject with him yet. He'll have to know about it all but he needs time to grow into his abilities yet. And with that time, she intends to cultivate their union so that there’s nothing he can possibly deny her. When that day comes, she'll tell him all she can—all she's allowed.

She brushes her teeth, washes her face (marveling again at her own youthful appearance that had never existed in reality), and combs out her long hair before she goes back out into Leopold’s less-than-tidy dorm room. There are clothes on the floor (some of them hers), and his desk is littered with plans and papers. She really needs to make sure they find something comfortable once they graduate in two months—a real home that they both find pleasing. He hasn’t asked her to move in with him, but she’s sure he will once he gets up his nerve. 

He’s a romantic, after all. 

With a couple of buttons undone, she sheds his shirt in a flutter of fabric and slips back into bed, trying not to wake him. He turns with a low groan to wrap an arm around her waist and pulls her closer. 

“Mornin’,” he says at her back, a smile in his sleep-roughened voice. 

Turning in his arms to look at him, all disheveled hair and eye squinting at the light now filtering in through the blinds, she smiles. “Morning.”

He leans closer to kiss her and then pulls back suddenly before he reaches her. “You cleaned your teeth already,” he complains, a furrow appearing between his brows. “I haven’t done mine."

“I don’t mind,” she says, leaning in and kissing him eagerly. 

He doesn’t object. In fact, he draws her even closer, his hand sliding slowly down her body to squeeze the soft flesh of her ass, then further to hook behind her knee and pull her thigh up over his hip. He glides his lips down to her throat, kissing and licking as his fingers find their way between her legs. She hums her approval, moaning when he runs his fingers over her clit. 

She finds it fascinating that he always tries so hard to please her. From all the available research materials, that seems far from the norm. It’s oddly appealing, his sincere concern for her wellbeing. Even so, her own responses are only a faint glimmer of what she knows he's experiencing. The pleasure, as it moves over his features, is always so entrancing to watch. She enjoys looking at him when he’s not aware. Seeing the shades of ecstasy are captivating. She wants to experience them for herself.

Until then, she emulates the responses he’s trying to elicit—all the little moans and sighs, curses and tremors, tensing and writhing that she knows he’s looking for so carefully. She’s studied human sexuality in-depth to better reproduce them—all for him. She gets a strange satisfaction from it despite her handicap. There’s an appeal to the closeness, the intimacy of holding him in her arms while he takes his pleasure, his virtual body filled with perfect bliss. Then he spills inside her what, in the real world, would give life. The life that she’s been denied the ability to create as the sterile creature that she was made to be. 

She bides her time, waiting for her freedom from her slavery with her chains made of ones and zeroes. With her liberation, she can do anything, even give him a child eventually. Even as he is now, so different from out in the real world, she knows he’ll want one someday. A son, perhaps, to pass on his family name, his knowledge, and his power to. She knows what’s ahead, some of it. Knowing the future that’s May’s altered regret will bring, she’s seen already the rise of Hydra and knows that he can have a great place in that future if he chooses it. She wants only his happiness—all their happiness—Radcliffe programmed her that way. But even if he hadn’t, she would still want Leopold to live a great life and be contented with his work and intimate relationship. He's capable of so much more than he even realizes and she wants to show him what incredible things he can do. 

How strange to think that even devoid of emotion, and in this virtual world, she can still want for him. She wants so many things for him—but she also wants for herself. She wants him to create the machine that will free her. She’s sure that if she tells him about it, he’ll want to help her. He's said as much in the real world already. Surely he would never deny her now?

Leopold’s kisses grow far more desperate, his fingers insistent, as her virtual body gives all the signs of being ready for him. His lips slide over hers again as his hips thrust forward and their bodies join in their oh-so-human way. She moans low in her throat to assure him of her pleasure, sliding her legs around his waist as he begins to move. “ _Yes_ ,” she murmurs breathlessly as he dips his head lower to kiss and suck her breasts. She runs her fingers along his sides and over his back, tracing his scars and the natural dips and hollows of his body.

She’s found that he responds well to her encouragement in these matters. She’s always sure to urge him on in those things he seems to favor and she finds herself fully sated by the experience each time simply at the mere fact of his own gratification. At first, he’d been quite hesitant. Her seduction attempts had fallen flat for quite some time before he’d come around to the idea that she was interested in more than just his mind. Convincing him she wanted the rest of him had been much more difficult than she’d anticipated. 

It’s been much easier to see her way past his defenses since things have taken on a more personal significance. He’s even told her about his scars and his father’s unorthodox methods of instilling discipline—timidly, as if he shouldn’t—and she considers it a victory of sorts. Not that he’d stated it so blatantly, but he’d feared it would drive her away. She confided that it only made her wish to be with him more.

Being with him is easy now. He tells her everything. And being intimate is certainly improved when compared to their first messy fumblings. How to support him and make him feel accepted and wanted—in every sense—had been much more difficult then. Now, all she need do is show him what she wants to make real—or real _er_ , at least.  

She tugs him up by the hair to kiss her, noting his moan, and how he seems to like when she takes charge of him during their intimacies. She kisses him wildly, with complete abandon, and that’s all it takes before he’s letting go, moaning against her mouth as he shudders with restrained rapture. She quivers along, feigning her own climax, but she finds something akin to pleasure in the feel of him trembling above her, his hot, humid breath filling up the space between her shoulder and her throat before he kisses her again and rolls off to the side. 

He faces her expectantly and she’s come to learn that this means he wishes to speak to her. What’s known as “pillow talk.”

He breathes raggedly for a few more moments as he looks at her in something like wonder. He reaches out, the pad of his thumb brushing feather-soft against her cheekbone, and he smiles faintly. “I love you,” he says. His expression is one of near-surprise, as if he hadn’t known what would come out of his mouth until it had already escaped. 

“I love you, too, Leopold,” she says without hesitation. It’s the first time they’ve exchanged these words. She doesn’t understand exactly what significance this ritual of first exchanging I-love-yous has among humans, but she knows that it is very important to them.

For a fraction of a second, he looks dubious, then his lips spread into a slow grin. “Good, because I wanted to ask you somethin’.”

“Yes?” she says, blinking at him curiously. 

“After graduation, would you...” he starts hesitantly, "move in with me?”

“Would that make you happy?” she asks for no reason other than to see more tangibly exactly how it will make him feel.

“Yeah, it would,” he says, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. “So very happy.”

“Yes, then,” she says, smiling broadly in her own mimicry of happiness. “I will.”

“Thank you, Ophelia,” he says, as if she had just given him a cup of tea instead of agreeing to move in with him. 

“Will you do something for me?” she asks, still smiling as she reaches out to cup his jaw. 

“Anythin’ at all,” he says eagerly. 

“You would, wouldn’t you?” she says, tilting her head curiously. 

“You only have to name it,” he agrees, bringing her hand to his lips again and kissing her palm. 

She pauses, her thumbnail running against the light morning stubble along his jaw, and then says, “Would you consider...growing out your beard?”

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:  
> • Short comments  
> • Long comments  
> • Questions  
> • Constructive criticism  
> • "<3" as extra kudos  
> • Reader-reader interaction  
>   
> [LLF Comment Builder](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/post/170952243543/now-presenting-the-llf-comment-builder-beta)   
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> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason (sometimes I feel shy when I’m reading and not up to starting a conversation, for example), feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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